Birthday

This is one of the acts we're performing for the White Album Christmas show, which is so far the most enjoyable and exciting Kazum performance I've had the pleasure of participating in.
Uli's the most common choreographer for Kazum now that Melissa's on maternity leave. She's delightfully good at choreography, though often it feels like she's very resistant to ... I wanna say any contributions but honestly it feels like it's my contributions that she's specifically resilient to. Maybe she's still playing nice with the new folk? Or maybe I'm just being overly sensitive 'cause we've worked together for long enough that the honeymoon phase is past? I honestly don't know. Anyway, she's killer-talented at choreographing and I'm uber-impressed with Birthday.

We start out with Russ & the ladies in a Three-Headed Dragon. That's one of my favorite Kazum stunts. Meanwhile, I'm lying on my back and Alex is "offstage," which on this set means "risking rectal damage from the drummer's intro" because he's standing right among the band. You see, our promised stage dimensions weren't delivered, and the night before the show we discovered that they'd taken a diagonal chunk out of our performance space. So we had to rechoreograph madly at the last minute in order to do what we've been practicing for 2 months now.

Birthday is a fast, pounding number. It's actually perfect for Kazum, though we all hated it at first. But the number we built around it has earned my undying love.

As the song starts, Russ and the ladies do some spinning and rearranging, kind of a kaleidoscopic deal. Meanwhile, I kick-pitch Alex into a high-flying front flip. Then he spins and I rush him so that he can toe-pitch me into a backflip. Next, just as Russ does a Double Popcorn-Shrimp with the girls, I toe-pitch Alex into one of the most perfect and astounding toe-flips ever seen by human eyes.

This toe-flip deserves some explanation. Alex has enormous experience and talent as a capoera guy. (There's a real word for this but I'm slightly too lazy to google it.) Capoera guys do the most amazing balancing & flipping & rolling! But they do it monkey-style, with flexed feet, and rarely do they rotate straight forward or backward - they tumble twisty. That's why Alex's back handspring is like a sideways-twisting swan dive, and it's why teaching him toe-pitches was sorta like throwing a tornado. He would twist out to the left so hard that it actually hurt my hand to throw him. (That's real hard.) No matter how much momentum I put in to counterbalance, homeboy always spun like 4 feet off to my right (his left) and it was freakin' scarey. Once he twisted right out of my hands and did a shoulder-roll, which shortened my life by 2 months or so and took my hair to a paler shade of grey.

But a few days before opening night, at our regular practice at the Egg, some arcane *click* took place (soundlessly) within the boy's twisty little mind. I threw the toe-pitch as usual, bracing for the customary wrist-wrenching feat of sideways spinnage... but instead Alex sailed neatly backward, shock written large on his short-shaven mug. I mirrored it, primarily to make him feel better, not because it felt so amazingly cool to throw a near-perfect toe-pitch. We immediately launched again... and this time he did it absolutely perfectly. There was a quarter-sized wet spot on the crotch of my shorts. He sailed nearly straight up, rode the toss like it was the Space Shuttle, then arched back with nary a trace of twistiness. My heart leapt into my throat as I saw him perfectly suspended, upside down, his forehead higher than mine. His feet sailed gracefully over, inscribing a perfect arch within an imaginary rainbow. He landed with the gentle sound of a dove coming to rest upon the brow of a virgin. I ran up and nearly raped him with excitement. Throwing a perfect toe-pitch is almost as thrilling as flying one must be.

So after Alex's simply astounding toe-pitch (which is, under conditions of optimal timing, perfectly synchronized with the girls' backflips via Popcorn Shrimp) I turn and he mounts my shoulders via a calf-pop. Now, for the record - calf-pops suck. They're clunky and slow, and really amateurish. There are far better ways to get a flyer to a shoulder-stand... but we do so many freakin' calf-pops that the concept of missing one is as foreign as the concept of Alex & Gaelen holding hands in church & singing hymns. (Aw, that'd look so cute!)

After nailing the calf-pop, I extend my arms out in a T, and then pump both arms to the beat of the music. It feels goofy, but on flim it looks pretty darn cool. Alex leaps down (we should totally replace that with a backflip, by the way) and Russ & the girls continue to do their switchery. I hop up on Russ's thighs behind him and point-swing my arms out at the crowd, as Alex belly-slides under Russ's legs and does some cool birthdayesque pose that I don't ever get to witness except on the rare occasion when we're flimming and I don't have to watch myself to critique me.

Then it's down on "birthDAY" and I cannot be late or the whole rest of the next sequence is jacked all to crud. I pants Alex... well, if I don't catch firm hold of his ankles, I pants him. Otherwise, I tug him back out from where he's camping out beneath Russ' jewels. He spins right and I spin left, as the ladies kick up to handstands. Russ catches their inside legs, one hand on each, and Alex & I catch their outside legs. We used to do it one-handed but my right shoulder thinks it's 10 years older than the rest of me, so now we do it one-handed. Russ leads the heft and before ya know it we're holding the girls up by their calves, as though they're beef carcasses. Well, veal carcasses. Or maybe sheep carcasses; they be tiny.

We ingeniously named this stunt "The Carcass." Alex & I sweep our girl into a cradle and dump 'em unceremoniously out, then leap backward in preparation for one of the more scary portions of the show.

Uli does a low dive-roll toward Alex and Miranda does the same toward me. Alex and I each do a high, arching dive-roll over the low roll. This is scarey because if something goes wrong, Alex or I would make gelatin of the unlucky girl that we smashed down onto. But we generally put all kinds of OOMPH into the leap. We pop up out of the roll into a toe-touch that's eerily reliably synchronized, as Russ does a simultaneous leap-thingy behind us. Then comes the worst part of the whole routine. We've rechoreographed it several times, and it's still uber-scarey.

We move into position - from stage left it's Russ, Miranda, me, Uli and Alex. The way we'd like to do it is as a triple-based extension from ground to extension in one smooth motion, the way cheer-stunting is designed to work. Instead, we nearly always buckle and swerve, usually resulting in falling flyers and all manner of ugliness. So we've changed it up. Russ & Miranda throw a Chair, then prep for Chair-to-Stand. Meanwhile, Alex and I are double-basing Uli to a stand. I pull one hand away and take Miranda's foot, then she has like 2 counts to transfer weight to me before all 3 of the bases (now-triple-basing) pop up to extension. That's pretty darn cool, though not as cool as ground-to-extention. We hold for the rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat musical cue, then cradle. I step out and the remaining dudes cradle their flyers.

Russ & Miranda throw a barrel-roll (ridiculously easy but way cool-looking nonetheless) while I throw a back-tuck. Lately my tuck has dripped with suckage. :( Meanwhile, Alex & Uli pop up to the Flying Squirrel. That's one of our few amazing tricks that isn't copied from Juanita & the Ganjou brothers. Instead, it's copied from a really incredible dance duo that we idolize almost as much as J & the GBs. As they spin madly about, Russ and I lift Miranda into ... I don't remember the name. I call it the Volcano Sacrifice 'cause it looks like we're about to hurl Miranda the virgin (heh) into a flaming pit to satiate some fell deity. We don't, though. Like he'd accept her anyway. "VIRGIN? PAH!" Knowing this, we instead just spin once and then Miranda back-arches down Russ' back, while Alex is positioning himself behind me and giving me a quick shoulder-tap so that I know he's in position.

Russ tosses Uli up and over his head as she does a toe-touch. This is a pretty darn easy stunt that looks fantastic. I catch her and duplicate the feat, tossing her back to Alex, who catches her and rebounds up into a Chair. Fa-LASHy! As they're Chairing up, I spin & toss Uli in a toe-touch over to Russ, who follows Alex's lead up into a Chair. Pretty gnifty. I spin around Russ & Uli as Alex & Miranda cradle, then Russ & I toss Uli in a very easy yet amazingly neat-looking Cannon Throw. She chest-cradles (ouch on the breasts, IMO, but she insists) and Russ and I look stupidly at one another in confusion because we almost invariably cannot remember our next choreography. While we do the poleaxed calf routine, Miranda & Alex are tossing Uli up for a half-barrel-roll (they should do a 540 instead of a 180, IMO) and then setting her gently out onto her poor little noggin'. Sometimes, that is. At other times, she executes a sweet back walkover, instead.

By the Russ & I have pulled our respetive heads out, and he goes off to do whatever the heck it is that he does next. I've been pinned in place by Miranda's gaze, for she is about to initiate my single most difficult stunt of the set. I drop into a crouch and Miranda springs, gazelle-like, toward me. With an effortless bound she steps into my hands and WHEEE it's like magic as the girl rides gracefully up, spins, and comes down in my hands in a nearly-perfect nearly-every-time walkup. She stunts crazy-good, she does. It fills my heart with blood.

And then both of our pulses shoot right through the ceiling, for next is the pop-to-cupie. Russ & Alex are holding Uli up in an inverted lotus, while walking across the foot of the stage. As they do this, I pop Miranda up into a Cupie, which is a wicked-hard stunt. Well, it's wicked-intermediate if you're a competitive cheerleader. The trick is the pop and the grip. If those are right, Miranda can stand atop a broomstick and keep her balance. She's one of those delightful girls who was born with a gyroscope insider her abdominal cavity. She redefines "tight" (shut up, pervos, "tight" in stunting means "motionless like a pencil".) So she perches both her feet atop my hand and then defies gravity. I help by lifting her up with one arm and doing my very utmost best to keep her centered perfectly over my right shoulder, without toeing her off front or heeling her off backward. When we get the right pop & grip, I can hold her there forever, which is what we're supposed to do while the Inverted Lotus travels across in front of us. On flim it looks way cool when it hits right.

Once they've crossed us, I cradle and throw her off leftward without any regard for her continued existence - the mark of a good cheerdude. I'm beelining for Uli, who really has no way down from the Inverted Lotus without me. She insists that the spinny-dismount is clumsy but I think it's pretty cool, myself. Then Alex & I get into position beyind Miranda & Uli, while Russ... what the hell does Russ do there? Knowing him, it's very nearly a show-stealer. That dude can vamp better than any of us.

This part has been labeled "The Funky Breakdown." Alex & Miranda do exactly what I & Uli do. At least, that's the theory, but for some reason we have mad difficulty synchronizing. I do it to musical cues but I suspect that Alex is counting it. Poor padawan. He must find his own path.

We each hold our flyer by the hands, with her arms over her head. As the funkiness begins the girls spin toward us, drop, and leap up as we heave mightily. They swing around, one leg dragging behind as they circle us. The move is called the Stripper Pole. Russ hates it but I don't know why. I think it's totally sweet. The girls end upside-down and we heave 'em up, where they spin and drop down into front straddle-splits, then back up where we do pointy-slinky synchronized poses to a musical cue. 'Tis most sweet.

Then we each lift our girl up into an Angel, wherein they put their elbows on Russ' hands and raise one leg. It probably looks pretty cool. But at that point I'm thinking, "Must breathe. Must hold this. Feeling will return to my arms at some point after cradling." We cradle, then Russ and I do a dorky high-five shoulder-slap thingy, then there's a musical cue that for some reason we don't hit the Basket Toss on. And then the previously-mentioned Basket Toss goes up - Miranda does killer toe-touches! We really need to learn a tuck, though. They're so simple it's ridiculous, but both Miranda and Uli portray the impression that a Basket Toss backtuck is a difficult manuver. *snort* Any collegiate cheer squad can toss a simple tuck.

Anyway, it's still pretty darn impressive. We toss Miranda out and then Russ & I stand in a base pose while pointing at the audience accusingly as if it's their birthday that requires us to go through this silly craziness. Alex pops nimbly up atop our shoulders as the girls take outside positions - Uli with Russ on the right and Miranda with me on the left. Alex takes one of their hands and lifts them as they arch up, into the Double-Base Chinese Star. A Chinese Star is a moderate-level cheer stunt that's actually called a Diamondhead. It was Kazum's trademark stunt but now Uli refuses to let the group perform it because "it stands for the old Kazum". Personally I think it's 'cause Jesse loved doing that stunt because it makes the base look all studly, although the mid-flier is actually the one doing 90% of the work. He actually refused to fly it so I got to, just so that he could look studly. Anyway, when I suggested a double-base Chinese Star as the final pose Uli totally rejected it. I appealed to Miranda & Russ, who cautiously backed me up on it, and Uli finally agreed to try it. We rocked it and it's now our strongest (not to mention almost our only) 5-person stunt. I've nearly drawn blood from chewing my own lip while not saying nor insinuating "I told you so" to Uli.

In the final stunt, the girls swing one arm down, and the end result looks pretty fantastic. They're supposed to have balloons in their hands at that point, which they release (I think). But Miranda's balloons didn't work out. The girls were planning to have the balloons "somewhere backstage" and grab them on their own, but I convinced them to have Gaelen hand them their balloons. Because of that, on Friday at least Uli's balloons were present. I dunno if it looked cool. The audience sure cheered, though.

Then we pop down and Alex leads us in a bow, and yay, we're done! Well, they are. Jasper has meanwhile arranged to have himself carted out in a birthday cake, which he pops up from. I throw him over my shoulder and haul him away again.

And that's Birthday! :)